White Males Are Still McCain’s Biggest Trump Card
New America Media, Commentary, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Posted: Sep 18, 2008
Editor's Note: New polls in five battleground states that could decide the presidency suggest the fight for the White House between Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama remains a dead heat. But it should not surprise anyone that McCain's stock is high with white male voters because they have traditionally backed GOP Presidential candidates, writes NAM commentator Earl Ofari Hutchinson.
Much is being made of Republican presidential contender John McCain’s bump up among male GOP regulars and independents after the Republican convention. But that’s badly misleading. Males, especially white males, have been the trump card for GOP winning presidents and even losing GOP presidential candidates for more than four decades.
Bush was only the latest to score big with white male voters. They gave Republican Presidents Bush Sr., Reagan, and Nixon the decisive margin of victory over their Democratic opponents in their presidential races. The majority of the men who voted for the GOP presidents were not the stereotypical gun-rack, beer-guzzling, blue collar Joes. A huge percent were middle to upper income, college educated, and lived in a suburban neighborhood. Fewer than one in five labeled themselves as liberal.
In a CNN 2004 presidential election voter profile, males made up slightly more than 40 percent of the American electorate, and of that percentage, white males comprised 36 percent, or one in three American voters. But even before the first votes were cast in 2004, the signs were that conservative leaning males would again play a decisive role in that year’s presidential contest. In an ABC/Washington Post Poll in December 2003, Bush netted more than 60 percent of the white male vote in a head-to-head contest with any male Democratic presidential candidate (former Illinois Senator Carol Moseley Braun was a candidate briefly). Southern born and bred Bill Clinton's tilt-to-the right centrism couldn't shake the iron grip of Republicans on conservative males.
Bush Sr. in 1992 and Republican challenger Bob Dole in 1996 got fewer white male votes than Reagan and Nixon. But many of those votes didn't go to Clinton. Insurgent presidential candidate Ross Perot, with his anti-government assaults in 1992 and 1996, grabbed many of them. Pat Buchanan also appealed to many white male voters with his freewheeling hard-right rants when he ran as an independent candidate in 2000. In 2000, exit polling showed that while white women backed Bush over Democratic Presidential contender Al Gore by 3 percentage points, white men backed Bush by 27 percentage points. Without the backing of Southern white males for Bush in 2000, Gore would have easily won the White House, and the Florida vote debacle would have been a meaningless sideshow.
In the 2004 election, the early polls that showed Bush getting 60 percent of the white male votes were completely accurate. In the South, he garnered more than 70 percent of their vote. Four years later, the margin was 26 points for Bush over Democratic presidential rival John Kerry among white males. Bush swept Kerry in every one of the Old Confederacy states and three out of four of the Border States. That insured another Bush White House.
The intense and unshakeable loyalty of working and middle class men to the GOP is not new and the reasons for it are not hard to find. The gender gap was first identified and labeled in the 1980 contest between Reagan and Carter. That year, Reagan pulled in more than a 20 percent difference in the margin of male votes he got over Carter. By comparison, women voters split almost evenly down the middle in backing both Reagan and Carter. Men didn’t waver from their support of Reagan during his years in office. In fact, many of them made no secret about why they liked him. His reputed toughness, firmness and refusal to compromise on issues of war and peace fit neatly into the stereotypically “male” qualities of professed courage, determination and toughness.
Though the penchant for males to back Republican presidents gave Bush the electoral edge in the race against Gore in 2000, Gore won the popular vote as well as the electoral votes in more than a dozen states, and women voters provided the margin for victory in those states for him.
The GOP’s grip on male voters, however, could have even spelled doom for Bill Clinton in his reelection bid in 1996.
If women had not turned out in large numbers and voted heavily for Clinton, GOP presidential contender Robert Dole may well have beat him out. While men rate defense, a strong military, the war on terrorism and national security as high on their list of concerns, women say abortion rights, education, social security, health care, equal pay and job advancement, and equal rights are highest on their list of concerns.
While racial, gender, and economic tensions and fears were driving forces behind white male devotion to the GOP, they're hardly the only reason for their political love affair with the party. Republicans have also played hard on the anger and frustration that many males harbor toward government.
In this election, nothing has changed. The same male trump card that’s been effective for past GOP presidential candidates is still very much on the table for McCain on Election Day. It’s a formidable hand for Obama to beat.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).
Related Articles:
How McCain Can Win the White House
Page
1 of 1
|
User Comments
Dzung on Sep 18, 2008 at 20:59:40 said:
"I hate the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live."
-John McCain, February 17, 2000
How any person of color could even consider voting for this someone like this is completely beyond me. Google "Mccain and gook," and spread the word.
Dzung on Sep 18, 2008 at 20:28:40 said:
"I hate the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live."
-John McCain, February 17, 2000
Why any person of color would even CONSIDER voting for this RACIST is completely beyond me. Spread the word, our people need to know about this man.
www.yellowrage.com/blog/
Obama criminal on Sep 18, 2008 at 04:57:36 said:
Barack Obama privately tried to persuade Iraqi political leaders to stall an agreement on scaling back American troops in Iraq while publicly campaigning for a speedy withdrawal, Obama’s campaign is not a train wreck; it’s Chernobyl.
-->Obama campaign seems to have hit the wall. Also has ramped up the dirty politics-as-usual theme that has been playing ever since the announcement of Sarah Palin as McCain’s Vice Presidential selection, sending a wild horde of Obamabots to Alaska in search of dirty underwear and soiled linens. Campaign also beset with some troubling scandals and stormy political foreboding. We’re not talking about Rezko and Ayers stuff which have been known since the primaries and continue to expand. We’re talking about a vast surge in scrutiny surrounding Obama’s beloved ACORN, about alienating half the voting populace in America by having surrogates question whether a mother should work. More, we’re talking about Obama’s potential violations of the Logan Act by tampering with U.S. negotiations with Iraq in order to impact the elections. The New York Post reported Barack Obama privately tried to persuade Iraqi political leaders to stall an agreement on scaling back American troops in Iraq while publicly campaigning for a speedy withdrawal, Obama’s request for a delay was a major theme of his talks with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said in an interview with the Post. Obama said that Congress should be involved in negotiations on the status of American troops, excluding the Bush administration in its “state of weakness and political confusion. Obama also reportedly tried to persuade the U.S. commanders, including Gen. David Petraeus, to offer a “realistic withdrawal date.” They declined, the Post said. As mentioned early this morning on American Sentinel, allegations that he attempted to tamper with negotiations in Iraq in order to benefit his campaign could, lead to actual prosecution. Obama’s selection of Biden over Clinton, followed quickly by McCain’s selection of Palin, solidified Obama’s reputation as someone who was immovable, selfish and lacking in judgement. Slamming Palin on her experience only wizened up the public about Obama’s own lack of credentials. In fact, polls now show that people feel both Obama and Palin are about equally qualified, despite a 24 hour Palin-is-an-idiot watch being conducted on nearly every major network. Combining poor judgment and an overwhelming ego with scant experience is not a way to carry your party to victory. And don’t forget the tasteless sexism and the community organizer’s organization being targeted for investigation all around the country for committing voter fraud. Obama’s campaign is not a train wreck; it’s Chernobyl Taheri quoted Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari in accusing Obama of attempting to block the negotiations between the US and Iraq on a status-of-forces agreement (SOFA). MAFPAC has its first issue, and its first ad will hit the airwaves this week:
One of CNN\'s leading Obama sychophants, Candy Crowley, let the cat out of the Obama bag, when she told viewers that the Obama campaign had wanted horrific Wall Street headlines to help their campaign. Crowley, and fellow Obama sychophant David Gergen, were extolling the virtues of bad economic news for the Obama campaign.
Of course, no one would expect CNN to actually deal with the issue of who or what party is responsible for the economy. No, their template is the economy is horrible, we are going to blame Bush and McCain and Obama will benefit.
The Drudge Report had this story on its site this morning, it had been pulled. Drudge realized how bad this would look for the Obama campaign.
It\'s beyond audacious that we have one candidate for President who is full of hope. Hope that the economy is so bad, that he can win an election because of it. The conservative internet has its work cut out for it for the next 53 days.